and others, our chief foreign affairs correspondent, andrea mitchell, is in washington. here we go again, the american public not anxious to hear about any u.s. military involvement anywhere else on the planet, using terms like weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, what do we do? now you have the criminal weapons going back over a decade, but the stock pile explains why the president and hillary clinton warned bashar al-assad forcefully this week not to use the weapons. a warning that secretary clinton repeated at nato again today. >> our concerns that are increasingly desperate assad regime might turn to chemical weapons. or might lose control of them to one of the many groups that are now operating within syria. >> reporter: now officials say they believe that those warnings did work so far. they are concerned, though, about the rising influential extremist groups. so the state department is preparing to designate one group because of the close ties to al-qaeda in iraq. still, secretary clinton announced they will take a big step, recognizing the main oppositi